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We have some long weeks behind us now… time to write some notes about our harvest 2014.

In 2014, the season started early and flowering was also early, so we planned the start of harvest at around the 15th of September. Unfortunately the ripeness wasn’t as fast as we had expected. Sonny days with fog … the odd rain… it was very slow.

So in the beginning we concentrated ourselves on prepicking. Fearing the Spotted Wing Drosophila could ruin our whole red fruit, we decided to pick part of our Pinot Noir and Merlot as a base wine for sparkling. We left the rest to ripen further.

Sunny days with morning fog, made the Rivaner skins very thin. So we started to pick Rivaner before Botrytis could do too much harm.

This year, we just had too many insects. Many berries had little holes and were infected by secondary parasites. So we had to sort the grapes from the beginning. Imagine picking grapes for 7 weeks, examining every bunch and taking away bad berries.

At the end of the day only the results count. We have managed to pick lovely aromatically ripe fruit. Der flavours during fermentation are sensational.

We picked enough grapes to serve the demand. The alcohol levels are lower than usual.

The quality is at our standard level and we are very happy with this vintage. Now that we have found out how the impact of Spotted Wing Drosophila really is, we are quite confident. But one thing is for sure. From now on we will always have enormous efforts. Only hard and exact work will generate high quality.

Today, we received an email enquiry for our 2010 Kaiserstuhl Pinot Noir from the south of France. An enquiry, that refered to an article in the Wall Street Journal…
Will Lyons, columnist from the Wall Street Journal tasted the wine in one of his wonderful One Minute Wine Videos.

” wonderful bright dark Burgundy colour… the nose is really appealing on this wine … spices, dark red cherry fruit… bit of the forest floor, mushrooms… this is a perfumed, complex wine… on the palate, texturly very light, also has acidity and savouryness… an ideal match for cold meat and food… ”

“… pretty good value for money… ”

This is a picture of the wine with the current label we sell in Germany…

2009 was the best Red wine year we have had in the Kaiserstuhl upto now. Durring budburst we had bad weather resulting in lower yields. Then the perfect dry weather in Autum with cool nights round off the growth cycle fabously. At a blind tasting done by the magazine Focus (Nr. 49 / 12 vom 3.12.2012 ab Seite 152) our 2009er Merlot & Cabernet Suavignon was rewarded 3 place! This was the only Wine from Baden in the top 10! For further infromation please click here ( hier klicken )

Monday was day we were able to harvest our Sauvignon Blanc grapes which showed an intensive flavour of gooseberry and touch of black current. We believe these grapes will be very worthy follower of the 2011 Sauvignon Blanc.

In the afternoon we continued with Pinot Gris, which were well sheltered on higher elevated piece of ground. These vines are growing on loamy soils so our grapes gain a minerality that is unique.

This year all our harvest photos are being taken by our team member Verena, seen above on the fare right.

On Tuesday the Photographer Michael Wissing visited our Winery. He captured the best portraits of our Family and our Wines, which will be published in the next Bookazine named ‘baden’.

The first batch of Cabernet Dorsa were ripe, to be collected.

This week we brought in our Pinot Blanc.

as well as our Pinot noir growing on loß soil.

Thankfully the Botrytis infected berries are very few and fare between, so we don’t need to panic but can continue harvesting our grapes at a steady rate.

This Tuesday we are having a film team arriving to do a take for the series Weinwunder Deutschland starring Stuart Piggott. The highlight for our Winery and Vineyard will be our Pinot Blanc & Chardonnay grapes. We are looking forward to it.

Here the summary of the first week…. we are very happy with the results so far.

The frequent rain showers which cooled down the air temperature had only encouraged little growth of Botrytis. On Monday and Tuesday we brought in the fully ripe Pinot Noir grapes which would not benefit from further rainfall. The Rivaner grape were very ripe with very few infected berries therefore we decided to harvest all of our plots this week.

Such good quality of fruit, we had to ensure that it was harvest with care and transfer straight to the winery. Beautiful Aromas of yellow stoned fruit…. nearly as intensive as last years.

Our team had such a good pace that they were able to harvest our Auxerrois grapes as well, even though it rained in-between.

After heavy rainfall the ground was sodden and very slippy that is why we couldn’t use our Tractor to drive through the vines.

Thankfully our Pinot Gris SJ vines are relatively short rows, so we were able to carry out all the grapes per hand.

Our Pinot Noir have reached their full ripeness. Here we have to work a lot by hand ….

On Saturday our first batch of Pinot Gris, growing on higher elevation and loamy soil, were harvested.

In the Afternoon we harvested the next batch of Pinot Noir growing on Volcanic soil.

This week we will continue harvesting Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris, Pinot Noir and our first batch of Pinot Blanc. In-between we will be bringing in our Cabernet Dorsa and most likely our Cabernet Cortis as well.

Somehow all the grapes have come to their optimum ripeness at the same time…. Intensive Aromas and good balance of acidity. We expect to be able to finish our harvest within next fortnight.

We started our Haverst on Monday the 24th of September 2012. We could have started earlier but utilised the extra days of sunshine to give our grapes more time to develope their uniqueness.

Are first choice of picking was our Pinot Noir clone, which due to their east to west alignement they were exposed much more to the sun. Therefore some berries had shriveled up and their Sugarlevels were high. This week the weatherforcast is it will be rainy and the tempertures staying moderate … great conditions for Botrytis infections ….

All hands on deck we went out picking eventhough the Weather was not looking so rosy.

We had rains and strong winds in the Morning which cleared later on. Leaving us a nice day with a few showers.

The outcome of the day was 15% vol. potential Alcohol… What more do you want?

The weather prediction is causing us a little of a headache….Not just the Pinot needs to be brought in fast.. but also the Rivaner (Mueller Thurgau)….There are single berries which will change colour to a pinkisch tient… this is a sign that Botrytis will spread soon…Our Harvest will keep us on our toes the next few weeks…. Please understand somethings don’t run as smoothly as normal..:-)

2012 starts with a “rollercoaster-climate”! Icy temperatures up to -12°C in Janurary/February did not allow us to work outside. Suddenly in March a sunny spring arrived with really warm temperatures, and there was bud burst end of March! The earlier bud burst the earlier harvest is, hopefully not!

little shoots 21st of April 2012

Gladfully we had a contrary weather period in April with cooler temperatures and rain. Growth slowed down and the soil could store enough water for the summer months. And for us no heat stroke at vintage!

shoots at the trunks

Mid of May, for the first time temperatures around 30°C arrived us. The vines grow fast and we have to hurry up to manage all the vineyard work in time, removing excessive shoots from the plants and remove all shoots from the trunks.

Compared to the year 2011, flowering starts three weeks later. Cooler weather during flowering means a reduced fruit set. We like that, naturally less fruits on the vines! Hot days end of June bring the flowering to an end. But thunderstorms and rain falls are not missing. Some vintners already claim about fungal diseases in their vineyards. Our vines are healthy and vital.

Seen end of July 2012 - sunburn - happens when you deleaf the fruit some too late...

We were right in time with deleafing our fruit zones. So you give the green little grapes the chance to build up a resistance against sunburn.

The warm and humid weather carried on in the first two July weeks. Growth of the vines is fast. The result of the contrary weather at flowering are vineyards in different maturity stages depending which variety or which section. Some have less fruits and then there are our shocking Müller-Thurgau sections offering way too much and big grapes. There we started with the green harvest.

green harvest Müller Thurgau End of July 2012

End of July, finally the real summer arrives. pure sun without rain. The first coloured Pinot Noir berries can be seen.

In August summer continues with nice cool temperatures at night. Best conditions for a smooth and equal maturity of the fruits. Vineyards are all healthy. Due to our strict vineyard management we have no problems with fungal diseases.